Digest of Current Publications and Events
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Digest of Current Publications and Events Editor: Iman Dawood ([email protected]) 05.02.2021 Conferences & Calls for Papers • Call for Chapters in an Edited Volume: Marxism in Muslim Contexts: Communist Organizing, Socialist Movement, and Religious Response • Call for Papers: What Does Decolonizing Kurdish Studies Mean?”, Middle East Studies at Yale University and Brown University, 9 April 2021 • Call for Papers: “New Political Generations in the Arab World”, Working Group “Monde arabe en mouvement", 16 May 2021 • Call for Papers: “Iran and Global Decolonization”, University of Pennsylvania and Uni- versity of California, Los Angeles, 20-21 May 2021 • Call for Papers: Articles on “MENA Migrants and Diasporas in 21st-Century Media” for Special Issue of “Mashriq wa Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies” Online Events • "Seeking Legitimacy: Why Arab Autocracies Adopt Women's Rights", by Prof. Aili Mari Tripp, SOAS (February 9th) • Telegraphing Revolt: Protest Diffusion During the 1919 Egyptian Revolution, Dr Neil Ketchley (February 17th) • "LGBTQ in Iran", SOAS, London Middle East Institute and Roya Arab (February 18th) Recent & Forthcoming Books • Global Middle East in the Twenty-First Century, by Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera • Call to Arms: Iran’s Marxist Revolutionaries Formation and Evolution of the Fada’is, 1964-1976, by Ali Rahnema Journal Articles & Other Academic Articles • Lamenting Karbala in Europe: Husayni Liturgy and Discourses of Dissent amongst Diasporic Bahraini and Lebanese Shiis, by Fouad Gehad Marei and Yafa Shanneik • Colonialism in the Region: Foundations, Legacies, and Continuities, by Mark Levine • A Cognitive Arab Uprising?: Paradigm Shifts in Arab Social Sciences, by Sari Hanafi • Iran’s Islamic Revolution: The Return of the Hunchbacked Dwarf, by Fatemeh Sadeghi News Pieces & Commentary • Saudi Arabia frees two jailed Saudi Americans after 307 days, Al Jazeera • Palestinian electoral alliance splits ahead of Israel vote, Al Jazeera • Islamic State regrouping in northern Iraq and relying on women operatives, Middle East Eye • Biden urged to hold Israel accountable over home demolitions, Middle East Eye • Arrests in Syria's Latakia signal discontent among pro-Assad communities, Middle East Eye • Lebanon’s protesters want an end to incompetence, corruption and impunity, Open Democracy • Anti-Hezbollah Activist Found Murdered in South Lebanon, Asharq Al-Awsat • Arab spring, European winter, by H.A. Hellyer Positions & Opportunities: • Short-Term Research Fellowships, Authoritarianism and Global Capitalism: Emancipatory Counter-Strategies in and from the Middle East, The Rosa-Luxemburg- Stiftung, the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies (both Freie Universität Berlin), and “Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe” (EUME) • Two-Year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo • Tenure-track Assistant Professor for International Affairs Programme, Lafayette College, Easton, PA • CFP: MARXISM IN MUSLIM CONTEXTS Seeking chapters for the edited volume Marxism in Muslim Contexts: Communist Organizing, Socialist Movement, and Religious Response. Please submit proposals to [email protected] by March 31, 2021. From the early decades of the twentieth century, Marxist thought and organization has played an important role in shaping public debate and political mobilization in Muslim majority societies. Active in counter-colonial struggle and postcolonial political projects, communists and socialists articulated an ideological and practical program of transformation that challenged the political economy of capitalism. Marxism became a means of struggling against empire as well as the grounds of resistance to the recapitulation of exploitation in newly independent nations. Given the presence and influence of Marxist movements, the response of Muslims to Marxism constitutes an important dimension of lived Islam in the contemporary period. This volume seeks to chronicle Muslim engagement with Marxism as a political and ideological project. The emergence of Marxism in Muslim contexts was a multi-faceted process in a historical period characterized by profound contestation about the meaning and practice of Islam. The response of Muslims to Marxism cannot be summarized by a single template of ideological rejection on religious grounds. Rather, we see that Muslims – intellectuals, cultural workers, everyday people, and religious leaders – constructed a variety of engagements with Marxism. Some adopted Marxist praxis as a mode of action consonant with their understanding of Islam. Some evaluated Marxist thought and organization and rejected it full stop. Others saw themselves as committed to similar ideals of social and political transformation and formed a type of practical consensus to work with Marxists as allies in justice-seeking. Our scholarly understanding of the impact of Marxism on Muslim thought, practice, and identity is still unfolding. Tracing the ways in which Muslims drew on Islam in responding to Marxism allows us to focus on one of the important elements that affected the formation of Islam as a lived religion in the contemporary period: Marxism stands as a site of contestation that became part of the on-going articulation of Islamic normativity. Exploring the full spectrum of responses of Muslims to the emergence of Marxism enables us to better apprehend how some modes of social action, political formation, and horizons of justice came to be seen as Islamic. It also allows us to grasp more fully the complex forms of subjectivity that characterized Muslim lives - how seemingly competing or contradictory identifications become integrated in the religious imagination of individuals and communities through lived co-existence. Contestations over both Islam and Marxism thus shaped popular understandings of what the contours of shared life should be. Tracing Muslim engagements with and responses to Marxism broadens the history of lived Islam while at the same time bringing into relief on-going religious conversations about political economy, including counter-capitalist Muslim critique. The primary and secondary literature on Muslims and Marxism is expanding. This volume approaches the topic through a broad geographical and interdisciplinary scope. Bringing together local cases from across the globe delineates one important force that shaped contemporary expressions of Islam. Proposals investigating Muslim responses to Marxism from historical, anthropological, literary, sociological, cultural, and religious perspectives are welcomed. Proposed chapters that use innovative approaches such interviews, autoethnographies, and primary source translations would also be enthusiastically received. Scholars are invited to submit a 300-500 word abstract and bio by March 31, 2021 to [email protected]. Notification of abstract acceptance will be communicated by April 30. Full chapters should be submitted by Dec. 31, 2021. Abstracts and subsequent chapters should be submitted in English. Contributions to the volume should be approximately 6,000-8,000 words. .